


an unpleasant side-effect

by green_piggy



Series: tales and chronicles of whump [1]
Category: Tales of Series, Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dehumanization, During Canon, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers, Video Game Mechanics, Whumptober 2020, Worldbuilding, it's for whumptober you should know what to expect, of pain!! hurray!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26826463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_piggy/pseuds/green_piggy
Summary: The contamination effect doesn’t always succeed.
Relationships: Guy Cecil & Jade Curtiss
Series: tales and chronicles of whump [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956778
Comments: 23
Kudos: 30
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	an unpleasant side-effect

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt "get it out" for day 6 of whumptober! i'm planning to do as many of these as inspiration allows lmao - they probably won't be as long as this one and definitely not on the actual date, this prompt just really got out of my control. sorry jade. (i'm not sorry)
> 
> guy: um... whatcha got there  
> jade: a smoothie :)
> 
> takes place after the gang arrive at keterburg, but before they go meet nephry!
> 
> hope you enjoy~ i've been crying over abyss for eight long slutty years, i'm amazed this is the first thing i've ever written for it - here's hoping to writing more!

Even with the fireplace crackling, Keterburg was still a freezing town with little in the way of warmth. Thankfully, the Flame Burst arte was easy enough to manipulate into a thin layer of heat over one’s body, keeping Jade at the perfect temperature even as he toiled away at the fon slot seal. He was making progress, certainly, but even months later, he was still far from his original capacities. It was certainly frustrating.

When the bedroom door creaked open, Jade looked up with a small hum. The innkeeper had left for his own dwellings after most of their group had gone to sleep. Jade had given him a cheery little wave as he left, ignoring the mortified look thrown back at him. And some people said that  _ Jade  _ was rude.

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see that it was Guy. What he was surprised by was how tightly he was gripping his right bicep; not necessarily looking  _ pained,  _ but certainly pensive. Sullen, almost.

The same area where he had received the curse slot, if Jade remembered correctly. He hadn’t spoken a word about it since Chesedonia. How long ago that felt.

He waited for Guy to notice him, for his eyes to widen and his body to jolt. Jade watched his hand tighten around his katana’s handle before he evidently forced himself to relax.

Most people’s attention seemed to skim over Guy entirely — after all, when most of their group were soldiers or nobility, very few people gave even a first glance at a simple servant — but Jade was  _ fascinated.  _ There were simply too many small pieces of information that, when added together, made very little sense at all. His fighting technique, his extensive knowledge of Malkuth, the utter evasion of any questions about himself…

Alas, Jade was a bit too occupied tonight to further investigate. That would have to wait for another time.

“Oh — Jade.” Guy gave him a friendly smile, eyes unchanging. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Neither was I.” Jade waved his free hand. “Please do carry on, though. I would hate to disrupt your exploration of your favourite vacation spots.”

Guy scoffed. “Yeah, yeah. I was just going for a walk to clear my h—”

He trailed off. Jade watched his gaze roam from Jade’s moving hand to the other, and felt a sick sense of glee at how his eyes almost bugged out of his sockets. “W-what — what’s  _ that!?” _

“Oh, this?” Jade held up the circle of fonons he had been carefully detangling. “The fon slot seal.”

“What the hell — not that!” Guy’s voice went up an octave. “The — the _spear in your arm!”_

Jade lifted up his right arm and peered at it. Truthfully, he couldn’t see the issue; yes, the partisan that he had bought today was unfortunately embedded in his arm, but that was just a side-effect of the contamination effect. It was mostly the handle that was in his arm; the side of the blade skimmed past his wrist, digging ever-so-slightly into his palm. If he thrust his fingers forward, he would certainly injure himself, but he was hardly so foolish as to do that. “Ah, this? Nothing you need fret about.”

“I think a weapon stuck in your arm really  _ is  _ something to be worried about! Shouldn't we get it out!? Or—"

“I’d advise you to calm down. You and I may be night owls, but the others are resting.”

He watched Guy’s face twist through surprise to annoyance to disgust before eventually settling into his familiar nervous grin. He walked over towards Jade, boots muffled by the carpet, before sitting down on Jade’s left side. Outside, Jade watched tiny balls of snow collide with the glass window and trickle down as liquid.

“How are you so calm?” Guy hissed. “What — what the hell even happened?”

Truthfully, there were far worse people that could have walked in and seen this. No doubt that Luke would have shrieked and given everyone a headache. Anise’s squeals would have been audible from Baticul. Natalia would have scrambled over, yanked the spear out without a second thought, and then there would have  _ actually  _ been an issue.

That left Tear and Guy, who were both remarkably good at keeping cool and not allowing their emotions to sway them into irrationality… provided that Tear was kept away from any ‘cute’ objects and Guy from any women.

“Every time I obtain a new weapon, I must apply the contamination effect to it. Even the best fononist cannot guarantee it succeeding every single time. The fonons of the weapon and the fonons of my body don’t  _ always  _ fuse together perfectly.” Jade gave his arm a little wiggle and watched the spear twitch with it. Guy’s face flushed an impressive shade of green. “Such is nature. It’ll have resolved itself by morning. The fonons simply need time to adapt to each other.”

“It’s… it doesn’t hurt?”

“Not as long as you move it.” It would become extremely painful soon, but he left that part out. “My body has been fooled into believing that the spear is a part of it, hence the lack of problems. If it is forcibly removed from my body, however…”

“Your body realises that, hey, it really shouldn’t have a weapon in it and starts gushing blood all over the place?”

“Something like that, yes.” Jade pushed up his glasses and allowed himself a quiet sigh. “It is… meddlesome, to be certain. But this hasn’t been the first incident, nor will it be the last.”

Letting out a disbelieving laugh, Guy leaned forward and ran his hands over his hair. “Sorry — I didn’t mean to freak out on you earlier, just…”

“Oh, you hardly need to apologise.” Something twinged in Jade’s chest. “Most people, after all, would be understandably horrified by this.”

Then again, Jade was not most people. This was a simple fact of life. Most humans would have had a reaction similar to Guy’s. When Jade had attempted the arte and seen the failure; the bottom of the handle protruding past the bend of his elbow, the steel head brushing his palm, the fonons of the rest of the spear fused with the fonons in his lower arm... all he had done was think  _ “oh, what a nuisance”  _ and summoned the fon slot seal to continue his work on removing it. Sleeping with a spear stuck in one’s arm was simply impracticable. Most people would have yelled. Would have felt terror and concern constrain their chest and make it difficult to breathe.

Jade… had felt none of that. Had experienced none of that.

Every time, those little reminders always seemed to make his facade of a heart ache. Only a bit. But the fact that it hurt at all was what was most baffling.

Something must have shown on his face, something that he didn't fully understand, for he saw Guy's own soften.

"Shouldn't you be out on your walk?" Jade resummoned the fon slot seal and hoped that would be enough of an obvious hint for him to leave.

But all Guy did was give a quiet laugh and cross his right leg over the left, cupping his knee with his hands. He leaned back to stare at the ceiling. Most of the ceilings in Keterburg’s buildings had that same terrible bubble-like texture that Jade remembered from his childhood. "Nah. S'cold outside, anyway. I'll just stay here for a bit."

"Not going back to sleep?"

It was a few seconds before Guy replied, his gaze boring into the snowflakes splattering the same window Jade had been looking at earlier. "...Nah. Don't really feel like sleeping, y'know?"

So, nightmares.

Then again, in their little group, one would have been hard pushed to find a member who  _ didn't  _ have nightmares of some kind. Anise and Natalia, perhaps. Jade had watched Luke shudder awake with a muffled scream many a night, clutching his arms and trembling and, on the most severe nights, vomiting into a bucket that he always kept at his bedside. Most nights, he seemed to sleep fine. Some nights, it was as though the ghosts of Akzeriuth were haunting his very bones. And while that was  _ understandable…  _ a small part of Jade hoped, as irrational as it was, that those ghosts would be kinder soon. The dead were dead. Allowing them to consume the living was simply too harsh a fate for anyone.

Tear was a soldier, if a bit inexperienced, and far more kind-hearted than she let on. It was far from surprising that she also suffered from frequent nightmares. More than once had Jade spotted her cross-legged in front of a campfire or on the floor, cuddling Mieu in her arms with a glassy look in her eyes. If she dreamed about the lives she had taken, or her brother, or something else… well. Jade was enough of a gentleman to not prod. It was hardly as though she would have talked about it even if he did ask.

Interestingly, for a mere humble servant, whose largest worries tended to be fretting over buttoning up their master’s outfits, Guy seemed to have more than his fair share of bad dreams. Were Jade not paying particular attention, he doubted even he would have noticed at all. He always awoke in the same fashion; eyes snapping open, body stiffening, mouth tight, as if holding himself back from making a noise. He would lie there for a minute or two, breathing low and fast — Jade always made certain to look as though he wasn’t paying attention — before standing and going for a quick walk. He certainly didn’t  _ seem  _ as disturbed by them as Luke or Tear were by theirs, but whether that was due to them not being as cruel or to him having more experience with them, Jade could not ascertain. He certainly acted like a man who was intimately familiar with them.

Jade had what people would call nightmares as well. Never what-ifs, but always had-beens. That night when he’d murdered his teacher, for one. The mind was an irrational thing and, in his dreams, where he could not control anything, often twisted his memories into a grotesque of what had truly occurred. The blood pooling around the head of Nebilim’s corpse became flames that made the skin around her face weep and melt into itself, hollowing out ashen bone that smiled back at him. The replicas that he had helped create, which had never harmed him before, tore into his body with dead eyes and unmoving lips. Luke and Ion, with those same empty eyes, just staring at him. No words. No movement. Only silence.

It was, truthfully, only the last one that affected him. Jade was a soldier; he was well-acquainted with the scent of burning flesh, the type that suffocated your nostrils and made even him gag in the back of his throat for a single second. He was familiar with close-range combat; his skin had been cleaved open before, and it would be again. Were it not for the existence of the Seventh Fonon, no doubt that he would have been dead by now — but couldn’t that have been said for most soldiers?

The nightmares with Luke and Ion were recent. They were new. He hadn’t yet adapted to them. That was all. That was the only reason why, some days, he couldn’t bring himself to look at either of their gazes, just in case he saw the weight of his own sins staring back at him.

He’d been quiet for too long. When he glanced over, Guy was frowning at him.

“You not sleeping?”

Jade wiggled his right arm with a slight smirk. “Rather impossible in my current condition, I fear.”

Even if the contamination effect hadn’t gone astray, tonight would not have been a night of rest for him.

“Ah — right. Of course.”

A lull in the conversation. Now was the perfect opportunity to divert attention from himself. Hopefully Guy would be made uncomfortable enough to quickly excuse himself and leave.

“What about your curse slot?”

“Huh?” Guy blinked, all wide-eyed and surprised-looking, and turned to him with an expression that was just a bit too demure to be sincere. “What about it?”

“You were holding your arm when you came in.”

“Ah — that?” Guy gave his right bicep a firm rub. “I banged it off the edge of the bed gettin’ out of it. Surprised I didn’t wake Luke up with how loud it was, but he can sleep like the dead sometimes.”

“Like the dead, hmm..?”

Guy gave a slight wince. “Probably not the best simile, huh.” He shook his head with a perfectly pleasant smile. “But the curse slot’s fine. Honestly, I’d completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it.” He let out a small laugh and gripped his knee with both hands once more, eyes drifting around the room's various decorations.

Another interesting tidbit about Guy was this; he was a very skilled liar.

Before Jade could speak though, a sharp jab of pain stabbed his right arm. He clenched his teeth with a hiss. The fon slot seal vanished in an instant as he resisted every instinct to clutch his other arm.

The inconvenient aspect had begun.

"Jade!" came Guy's concerned voice. "What is it? The contamination effect?"

At least he hadn't asked a foolish question such as  _ “are you okay?”.  _ He tried to speak, but another burst in his arm made him double over. The arte that had been coating his body flickered and died, leaving him shivering from the cold even as he broke out in sweat. Out of the corner of his eye, there was a faint glow of green shimmering over what was visible of the partisan.

This was why he had wanted to be  _ alone.  _ This part was always ugly.

Being stabbed hurt less than this. Jade couldn’t speak, couldn’t  _ think,  _ couldn’t do anything past the searing, all-consuming pain. All he could do was attempt to breathe through it. He couldn’t move his right arm. If he touched the weapon at any point during this, it would only make it far,  _ far  _ worse.

His glasses slid off his sweaty nose and clattered against the carpet. Jade moaned and dug the fingers of his left hand into the sofa. The cushions were too firm for him to take a proper grip. His hand slipped off it uselessly and smacked the table nearby.

There was shuffling beside him. A few seconds later, Guy’s hand held out his left glove. Countless calluses and scars were scattered across his bare fingers and palm.

“Open your mouth,” he said, his voice stern. “And grab my arm if you need to. It already hurts like a bitch. I won’t notice.”

Any other time, Jade would have scoffed. This time, he opened his mouth in wordless agreement. Guy shoved the glove in. Jade clamped his teeth down on it hard. His teeth would leave holes in it, he was certain, but it provided a welcome relief from his burning jaw.

At the next wave, worse than the last, one that resonated through his entire body, Jade dug his fingers deep into Guy’s sleeve. He felt him stiffen under his grip, for less than a second, before relaxing.

For a long moment, Jade shook, lost in an ocean of agony.

"Should I get Natalia—"

_ "Not Natalia,"  _ Jade hissed through the glove. Or, at least, he attempted to. It came out as a muffled groan.

_ Lorelei,  _ no matter how many times the contamination effect went astray, it never hurt any less. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly enough to see stars. Even though he knew, logically, that barely any time at all had passed, it felt as though he had been suffering for an eternity. It was all he could think of. In that moment, he couldn’t remember a time freed of — of  _ this. _

Oh, how it  _ burned. _

“Tear?”

Jade shook his head. His arm screamed, and he threw his head back, neck twisting, trying not to scream as well. The glove fell out of his mouth, twisted and covered in saliva.

“A healer won’t —  _ agh —  _ won’t help. Not with this.”

Guy bit his lip, eyes shadowing. “Not at all..?”

"If you can—" His arm was throbbing in harmony with the beating in his chest. "—can somehow  _ — ahhh —  _ wake up the healers without giving yourself a panic attack, I — I will be very impressed."

“You’re  _ really  _ giving me crap right now?”

“This shouldn’t last much—”

He almost yelled at the red hot explosion in his arm. Guy picked up the glove and thrust it back into Jade’s mouth.

The fonons were brightening. When he managed to chance a glance over, the tips of either end were beginning to dissipate. Almost there,  _ almost there— _

A flash of light. Jade  _ screamed  _ into the glove, hurting hurting  _ everything was hurting twisting and raging and howling but he knew he’d caused others so much more— _

And then, just like that, it stopped.

“Holy  _ shit…”  _ he heard Guy whisper.

The glow of fons had faded. Panting, chest hammering, hair stuck against his forehead, Jade raised his right arm and did his best to still its tremors.

The partisan was gone. No longer did its head or handle jut out of his body. His sleeve and glove were both undamaged. With a deep breath, Jade held out his hand and willed the weapon’s inorganic fonons to assemble.

In a flash of green, the partisan appeared. Despite the weight dragging down his bones, Jade couldn’t help but smile.

It was a good thing that it had corrected itself so quickly. If he had met his sister tomorrow with a spear in his arm… well. Doubtless that she wouldn’t have been amused.

Now that the pain had faded, all that remained was an aching fatigue that seeped into every pore of his body. His hand was still clenching Guy’s arm in a death grip. He let go and shook out his fingers. He had left a bruise, that much he was certain of.

With a wave of his other hand, the partisan vanished. Feeling the fonons flow back into his arm, Jade allowed himself to slump against the back of the sofa.

“Not,” he heaved out, “a  _ word  _ of this to anyone else.”

“I, uh, wasn’t going to.” Guy was poised on the edge of the sofa, looking more than a little awkward. Jade couldn’t blame him. It must have been an unsettling experience to witness. His bare fingers were rubbing the spot where Jade had been clutching onto him. Guy bent down and retrieved Jade’s glasses. “...Does that happen every time the contamination effect messes up?”

“Ah. Thank you.” Jade took back his glasses and pushed them up his nose, taking comfort in their familiarity. “It does. But…” It took him a second to catch his breath. His age truly was beginning to have an impact on him. “It is — only temporary. That was the most severe it has ever been.”

Guy just frowned deeper. “Temporary or not, it looked like it  _ hurt.  _ That’s… not something you should just dismiss.”

“Pot calling the kettle black, hmm?”

He jumped, hand darting away from where it had been gradually moving towards the curse slot. He gave Jade a flat look, one that reminded Jade vividly of the face Luke used to pull when annoyed before the events of Akzeriuth.

“Jade,” he said, “shut up.”

He pushed himself off the sofa, tugging off his other glove before going into the bedroom. Jade watched the door click shut and felt something odd stir within his chest. That had been… a rather anticlimactic way to end the night. He hadn’t thought that innocuous comment would upset Guy  _ that  _ much.

Truthfully, he was too exhausted to return to his bed. He didn’t even have to share with anyone else; with four beds, the usual arrangements were for Luke and Guy to share one, while the women alternated between their possible pairs, and Jade had his own. But the mere thought of  _ movement… _

Jade draped his arm over the edge of the sofa with a loud sigh.

He cracked his eyes open when he heard fumbling to his right, and then struggled to remember when he had closed them. The bedroom door opened; there stood Guy, a quilt thrown over his shoulder and a pillow tucked under his arm. There was a tatty red journal in his left hand.

“C’mon, old man,” he said, voice not unkind. “Sit up long enough for me to get this stuff down.”

“Treating the eldery with such disrespect shouldn’t be allowed,” Jade muttered. Still, he pushed his shaking hand against the sofa’s edge to sit upright. “And, last I checked, this was a sofa. Perhaps  _ you’re _ the one in need of glasses.”

“Yeah, you’re hilarious.” Guy heaved the quilt on the sofa next to Jade with a grunt and tossed the journal on top of it. Jade strained to read the writing, but Guy was leaning over him and fluffing up the pillow before he could make it out. “You’ve had a long night. Doesn’t look like you’re gonna move.”

“Hmph.” Jade tried for a shrug. “If you insist on coddling me, it’d be heartless of me to turn you down.”

“Like you’ve ever cared about  _ that  _ before.” Guy was almost smiling to himself as he placed the pillow against the edge of the sofa. He picked up the quilt. “Hey, move up your feet.”

“You’re not sleeping?” Still, he pulled up his legs enough for Guy to collapse on the sofa.

“Told you, didn’t I? Don’t feel like it.” Guy arched his arms up high and stretched for a few seconds. “I’m not tucking you in, you’re not _ that  _ old.”

Rolling his eyes, Jade took off his glasses and folded them before placing them on top of the table. He would have been significantly more comfortable in an actual bed, but…

There was something almost — dare he say —  _ idyllic  _ about curling up on a sofa with the fire crackling next to his head and watching the snow flutter outside. Guy leaned over and pulled shut the curtains next to the sofa.

Something was caught in Jade’s throat. A strange sensation, as if someone had shoved steel wool down and he couldn’t quite get it out.

“If you say thank you, I’m gonna be asking you where the real Jade is.” Guy threw one leg over the other and leaned back against the sofa. He picked up the journal — Jade caught the script of  _ ‘Hod Citizen Registry’  _ on the front just before Guy flipped it open. “Go to  _ sleep.  _ I’ll wake you before any of the others get up.”

It seemed that even words were trapped in his throat. Without a sound, Jade allowed his head to thump against the pillow. “Don’t stay up too late yourself,” he eventually said, hating how hoarse his voice sounded.

“I won’t,” came Guy’s soft lie.

Despite the quiet ache in his arm and the persistent quiver in his body, Jade soon fell into a dreamless rest, lured to sleep by both the warmth of the fire and of simply having another nearby. It was, truthfully, one of the most pleasant nights of rest he’d had in many years.

**Author's Note:**

> [ [twitter](https://twitter.com/greenpiggles) ]
> 
> if you enjoyed the fic, please consider leaving a kudos and/or comment, and i hope you have a wonderful day! <3


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